Ali Alkhatib
My inadvisable camera setup
12 June 2026

People have asked what I use for video, and I’ve always been reluctant to list everything I’ve got. A lot of it is redundant, involves lots of compromises that normal people wouldn’t want to make, or is wildly over-budget for normal people looking to get a good video for zoom or even video recordings. But I also realize sometimes people are just curious. So in the interest of satisfying that curiosity, I’ll list what I happen to have & use, and then I’ll work through a list of things I think I would probably recommend someone to buy if they wanted to have a decent video setup that requires as little adjustment as possible and gives you a lot of flexibility between video chats, recordings, or whatever else.

Here’s what I use:

  • bmpcc 6k gen1
  • sigma 35mm f/1.4 ART
  • some cheap adjustable ND filter
  • cheap tripod legs + iFootage fluid head
  • Elgato 4k USB capture device
  • some cheap HDMI cable
  • Shure Beta 58A Microphone
  • Zoom F3 (when I’m just doing an audio call)
  • XLR cables
  • Nanlite FS-150/300B monolights
  • some C-stands and clamps

Have I mentioned that you should not get that? I’m not even linking to them - that’s how much I want you not to buy this stuff.

I don’t use the full extent of the features of most of these things, and if I needed to rebuild my entire setup with $2000-3000 budget, I would skip most of this stuff. I have some of this gear because of a past life in photography that I just decided to reuse (like the sigma lens). Other stuff I bought because I was drawn in by influencers; other stuff was probably the best thing I could get at the time, but you could get something much better for much cheaper today.

So with that… here’s what I think I would get, if I was determined to have a dedicated light, video, and audio setup without wanting to improve my setup for at least several years (if ever).

video stuff

The 17-40mm f/1.8 is very versatile, but if you want to set it up in one place and not adjust things, the versatility might be $500 spent on versatility you don’t care about. I still think it’s a good option, especially if you don’t have a strong intuition about how far you want the camera, how tight a frame you want on your face, etc… but the lens is going to eclipse the cost of almost everything else, so if you think you’re pretty satisfied with a 30mm or even 16mm lens, then you can save about $300-400.

Optical quality on a prime is also generally better (for the same price) than on a zoom lens, so while you could find a zoom lens around 17-40mm for $300-$500 (similar to the prime lenses), odds are the optical quality won’t be as good as either prime. But you might not care, especially if you’re on video chat; on zoom or jitsi or google meet, nobody will be able to tell the difference between a $300 zoom and a $900 zoom.

If you think you just want to replicate the view I have, I would say go with the 30mm. If you don’t have a ton of room, you might find 16mm better for your setting.

I’m listing an adjustable ND filter because the goal with lighting (in the next section) might involve trying to overpower ambient light that fluctuates or doesn’t provide the look you want. That often means a lot of light, so you’ll sort of have to balance it back out by knocking down the exposure with an ND filter. This isn’t an amazing ND filter, but I’ve been happy with it, and I think it’ll do the job. I’m also suggesting an oversized filter and step-up rings because it’s just cheaper to buy one giant filter and then stepping up to that size, rather than getting multiple filter sizes that may not be compatible with whatever lens you’re using down the road.

lighting

Lighting can be annoying. I think you’ll find it easiest to use a dark room and then add lights to it. I would suggest some kind of modified “3-point lighting” setup, but instead of a fill light, use something to reflect the key light back to your face. The image below doesn’t show it, but imagine the camera between the key light and the fill light pointing at the object.

lighting

(credit to wikimedia)

I’ve always found the back light to be kind of marginal to the final image. It’s nice if you can illuminate the background if you have books or something back there, but if you don’t want to spend $120 on that, don’t worry about it. If you have christmas lights, a lamp, or anything else that you can turn on in the background, that would help add some depth and make the video look nice.

It’s relatively important to use high-quality lights for the key light and the fill light; if the color rendering index (CRI) of those lights is very poor, your skin might look really off in a way that’s hard or impossible to fix. Those are where low-quality light will hurt the image (or conversely, where high-quality lights really reward you).

In any case, I would consider pointing the key light (whichever one that is) either at the ceiling or at the wall that you’re facing. That’ll reflect the light back in a broad, diffuse pattern, without you having to spend $100+ on a softbox (or find space for a softbox, which can be enormous). This is what I do with my key light (point it at a white wall and let that illuminate my face).

Unfortunately, this is really something you’ll just have to experiment with and come up with something that looks creatively nice and acceptable to you. On the plus side, you get to experiment.

I will offer that video compression “crushes” shadows (and so does YouTube, for that matter) so that you can’t see as much detail in there, so don’t get too fancy with dramatic lighting. Flat, even lighting is better than really moody lighting with highlights and deep shadows that get messed up by video compression.

audio stuff

  • microphone: either:
    • if you can have the microphone in the video frame: shure sm58 (on B&H) ($100)
    • if you cannot tolerate the microphone being visible in the video frame: se electronics se7 (not on B&H as far as I can tell) ($120)
  • field recorder: zoom h1 xlr (on B&H) ($150)

I have my microphone on a little arm that I can adjust and point just under my mouth toward my chest. There’s a bit of technique to make sure you’re not breathing into the microphone or making “mouth sounds” that can be quite upsetting to people listening on their headphones, but either the SM58 or the SE7 will be reliable tools to work on mic technique.

In an ideal world, you would try out a handful of microphones and listen to yourself on headphones to see what pairs with your voice most naturally. In reality, we don’t all have access to a plethora of microphones, and we just kind of have to hope or trust that someone on YouTube has a similar voice as us, and their reviews are representative of how our voice will sound.

The field recorder may be excessive and it is possible to connect your microphone to your camera for less than $150, but a field recorder is legitimately useful for other reasons that you may have need for later (audio-only productions, recording interviews with people offline, etc…). This is a small premium that potentially solves a handful of other problems later on.

audio treatment

Doing something to “knock down” reverberation in your room will help a lot, but I don’t think there’s anything online that I would strongly recommend. Everything is either very expensive or very bulky and impractical to ship (often both). If you have blankets or other soft, dense material that you can put up around you when you’re recording, that’ll help absorb your voice before it bounces off the hard walls and returns to the microphone. You’d be surprised how much everyday things like couches, beds, bookcases, etc… can help, and how bad a room can sound when you’re recording in a bare room.

I would not recommend buying those 12” square foam panels that you see in packs of 50 on Amazon. I’ve bought them, they were utterly useless for what I needed, and probably objectively useless for anyone’s needs. They’re a miniaturized simulacrum of real sound panels that cost $400+ and require mounting hardware and stuff because they’re just too substantial to apply to a wall with double sided sticky tape. The only “hack” is to buy a certain brand of insulation from a hardware store, wrap it in fabric, and mount that to a wall; the cost for that is closer to $100-200, not the $30-50 of those amazon products.

some other audio things

These are the less exciting peripherals and cables that you almost definitely need if you’re getting the above stuff:

misc/peripherals

necessary

optional

Subtotal is, I think, $2,523.23 (or thereabout) with the 16mm lens. The 30mm lens will be a little less, and the 17-40 zoom lens will be about $400-500 more.

new vs used gear

Generally, video gear is safe to buy used, because it’s built to be used in very rough conditions. I would especially recommend finding the camera, lens, and microphone on the used market if you can. Stands and other grip gear is also fine to buy used, but people don’t sell clamps and stands all that often; you kinda buy it once and you’re set for life.

Lights are complicated; LEDs deteriorate with heat over time, so if they spent 5 years turned on for like 8 hours a day they’ll be in worse condition than new LEDs (which might look like a nasty color shift). All of which is to say I would buy lights new or very lightly used.

[BH se electronics se7]:

[BH usb cable]:

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